[d3v0 lifeblog]

--I went to see off_black, the_fishbowl and their new offspring. There has been a single complication that required surgery to rectify. I find it heartbreaking to think about newborns having to undergo surgery.

Charlotte, the offspring, has undergone surgery for this well know condition and is healing.

In the following little clip she is in day 3 of 5 days of drug induced immobilisation and unconsciousness. I am told she will be in this position for the duration, it makes my complaints about being cramped up in a plane pall.

Being immobilised means that off_black and the_fishbown are not allowed to pick up their offspring. Even further they are not able to stroke her for fear of stimulating her, and are only allowed to touch her in designated ways on designated body parts.

These restrictions effectively exclude all common forms of expressing love between humans in our culture; hugging, kissing, stroking and holding.

Kia kaha to you both.

The parents are handling this temporary enforced psychological gulf of expression very very well. I can only offer my meagre support here and in real life and hope that things progress well.

--

ms_mini_charlotte, 3 days old, Wellington Hospital Neo Natal Unit. She is gently 'baking' in an incubator with the lid up.

Only parents are allowed to touch her, only two people at a time next to the incubator.

If you look carefully you can see her breathing. :-)

(There is some random woman prattling away in the background which you may choose to ignore.)

--If I want to be a world saving geek then I have to make my home server more low power. It is pretty good, about as good as was easily attainable until this great piece of kit came out this year. It is basically a very low power laptop without a screen, perfect for my intentions as an internet router, firewall, application server, bittorrent download, subversion, cvs, samba, NFS server and wireless access point.

It draws about 16W to 22W which is like running a big energy efficient light bulb. I can probably make it draw less than this by installing primarily to a USB drive or memory card, this will save another W per hour, which is 8736W/ hours per year, the 24 by 7 nature of servers makes every little W add up.

8736W is like your oven running hot for about 10 hours or so, maybe more.

When my unpaid-invoice-cashflow-problem sorts itself out in a few weeks I'll have a look at getting one of them. I'll chase the lowest price by looking here. A good review of this tiny thing is given here, complete with power usage and noise.

--I've just registered for my end of winter activity, probably the most fun I'll have all year outside of a bedroom.

NZX008, A Kiwi As Exchange is lindy hop camp. The naming is a bit odd, but lindy hop camps are internationally called exchanges. I'm not sure why.

It is 2 1/2 days/ 3 nights of lindy classes and dancing. Check out the sweet looking timetable here. It is very serious, activity is planned from 8 in the morning to something like 2pm at night, just insane!

I am pretty excited about this, is will be my first lindy camp it looks truly fab!

It is kind of like those dodgy school camps you were forced to go to in intermediate and secondary school, those ones were children act like children, it is cold in the mornings and it is all guys because you go to a guys only school.

No wait, it is nothing like that!

It is mixed adults, all mad mad mad about lindy hop, a few overseas people, mad keen teachers, big clean dancefloors and no drink bans :-)

--Even before I have earnt any money after my hols, I have to book some more stuff while I can.

Picton WeddingA marriage in the sounds in a little bay in the early evening, should be seriously mint. All booked as of tonight.

Lindy CampNext month there is a lindy camp in Auckland. I will try to book this tomorrow.

The lindy camp is called NZX2008 - A 'Kiwi As' Exchange, details here.

Massage TrainingI want to learn how to massage, I think I would find it fascinating. I haven't looked into this yet at all but I know that there are weekend courses held in Wellington at a massage college.

Looks like the next weekend course is on the Saturday and Sunday of February 2nd & 3rd. The course page I am looking at is here.

Art Deco Weekend AccomodationI need to book and put a deposit down on my accommodation now. Will look into this tomorrow.

Last year people checked into the Criterion backpackers in lue of other places that had previously been the mainstay. I'll need to book a room there.

--The world is going through a financial meltdown. It is not yet of epic proportions but will continue on for some time.

AIG has just accepted a deal from the US Government, a %79.9 ownership stake for the price of a $89billion loan. This is pretty cheap as the company has a trillion dollars of assets. For this to make sense to AIG they must be in pretty deep doo doo.

The muddling managers of AIG will get axed and replaced by government appointees. This is a very big deal, the US Government usually reserves this kind of deal only for banks, but even then it felt that it was appropriate to let the Lehman Brothers investment bank go bankrupt over the weekend rather than to intervene.

--I'm going to look at these suit places in order, apparently they are towards the top end of suit makers that are close to me, the first being a bit faster than the second, I probably don't have time for 4 fittings!:

--I've made it to Ho Chi Mihn City. It is hot, a little humid and dusty smelling.

I'm sitting in an internet cafe thingy not far from my hotel. It is playing annoying classical music, annoying because it has been recorded using a synthesized piano, one of my least favourite instruments.

It is definitely singlet and shorts weather if you are from Wellington. I'm already getting urges to get the heck out of the city already.

Read the Wall Street Journal, Asia addition today. It said nasty things about Putin. It also said intelligent things about capitalism and its reaction to Russian in Georgia. Investment flows have been yanked out of Russia as an all around response to percieved risk in Russia, this is bad for Russias plans to reinvent itself, that captial investment has to come from somewhere.

I'm off to do some touristy things, which on the whole I'm not very good at.

--Brussles TubeI had an odd experience on a Brussles tube. It happened on a main line, near the centre of Brussles during a regular service.

The train pulled into a stop heading southwest. The train stops and people board and alight as normal.

Next the train pulls away in the opposite direction before being switched to a west running track, very freaky as a tourist.

French WomenWestern women, probably without realising it, are basically trying to conform to French female dress sense norms. There are three things happening here I can see here with my highly detailed engineers eye:- fit; all french woman exclusively only wear clothes that actually fit them, western woman are mostly lazy with fit- cut; all french woman only wear cuts of clothes that are compatable with their body types, in particular seat shape, shoulder width and line of the garment all seem to match the woman exteremly well- hair style; french woman seem to have chosen hair cuts that accentuate the feminine features of their faces, typically softening then and rounding them out through the clever user of waves and bobs, not many fringes here.

I conclude that french women do not do bad impulsive things at the hairdressers or while shopping. These french woman have a sense of engineering at the core of their corture.

SummerLondon late summer => jeans and long sleeve tshirtsBelgian late summer => jeans and short sleeve tshirtsParis late summer => shorts and short sleeve tshirtsI'm not sure I'll be able to wear clothes in Tailand!